DATING SCAMMER Elena Novoselova

I am a 51 year old divorced male with no children in the USA. I was contacted through Yahoo Personals on March 13, 2004 where I have had a listing for about a year. I had no idea where this was coming from. It wasn't until after I sent my first letter that I found out "she" lived in Russia. I had no idea that there were Russian wife scams and was taken totally by surprise. Also this happened at a most vulnerable time in my life so I wasn't able to analyze and think things through properly. I kept getting thrown off guard with different crises she reported that kept coming up. Although she usually didn't ask for extra money I felt compelled to help her. It wasn't until after sending money in stages for a total amount I don't even want to think about, that I finally realized there was a big problem. The final letter came on May 4th. At that point I did some searching and happened to find web site about these scams, downloaded the Anti-Scam guide and everything was made crystal clear. The pictures used are of the same girl shown on another black list site called Natalya Romanova reported by three others. The first several letters (except for the name and place) are virtually identical to the ones I received as well. I have included all the letters sent to me to show the full and subtle progression and the lengths to which they went to get additional money. I hope this is helpful.
Had I been tipped off sooner I would have been thankful and not thought much more of it. Having been scammed in such a big way I now will do everything I can to try to prevent this from happening to others. When I spoke to the fraud prevention manager of the US Embassy in Moscow they said there has been a sudden and huge increase in this activity since March of this year. They said there is little the Russian government is doing about this and it is very low on their list of priorities. They said the best thing is to try to get the word out over here to warn the public about what is happening. "If their source dries up this will die out. As long as this continues to work for the scammers it will only get much worse" As my time permits I intend to start by contacting all the local news agencies - TV, papers etc. and have them feature stories about this.
I will also have a prominent consumer advocate who also deals with fraud put pressure on the dating services that these contacts are being made through and insist that they post prominent warnings about this on the home pages of their sites. If I had seen a warning I and many others would not have fallen for this. Also I will try to have Western Union post similar warnings an their site. On there page related to fraud scenarios there is no mention of this at all and yet most of the money being transferred is through there service. Again, that could have tipped me off as well. I have thought this would make a most interesting screen play. A popular movie would draw a great deal of attention to this epidemic and could prevent many more millions and even billions of dollars from being stollen from American men (as well as Canadian, Australian British, etc.)
by Russian criminals who feel they can get away with this. Thank you for all your efforts!